Sanchia S Goonewardene,V Nanton, A Young,R Persad and David G
Introduction: There are an ever increasing number of prostate cancer survivors. These patients are currently followed up in secondary care. Focus of care is on recurrence and acute management, not holistic care.
Method: Over a 3 year period, patients attending follow-up appointments having completed treatment for organ confined prostate cancer and satisfying entry criteria were offered to join the programme. This comprises a database for PSA tracking and holistic assessment of patient needs run by a specialist nurse. The programme is supplemented by a Survivorship conference once a year, where patients have access to healthcare professionals discussing a range of topics related to prostate cancer. We assess patient satisfaction with questionnaires both pre and post conference and with a focus group in order to develop recommendations for the programme.
Results: We currently have 178 on the database 55 patients and friends visited the conference, with the majority specifying they would re-attend. The majority also ranked the conference as worthwhile re-attending. After the conference, we demonstrate patient concern decreases, with disease control and understanding increasing. We also show patients prefer the community based follow-up scheme, as opposed to a hospital based follow up.
Conclusion: Survivorship care has yet to be developed fully in clinical practice; this paper demonstrates how we can do this as part of a co-led approach with patients.
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